MMC

The primary management interface for Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) is the Microsoft Management Console (MMC).

A cross application and shared management tool, the MMC provides a framework for administering multiple network management programs. In addition to being included as a component for the Microsoft Windows NT Option Pack, the MMC will be incorporated into Windows NT.

The MMC console by itself does not provide any functionality, but it does provide a common environment for snap-ins. Snap-ins provide the actual management environment for each associated product. For IIS, the implemented snap-in is Internet Service Manager. When you start Internet Service Manager, the MMC starts and loads the Internet Service Manager snap-in.

In future release of all Microsoft BackOffice products, including Windows NT, administrative tools will be converted to MMC snap-ins. MMC specifications are also available to third party companies and many third party software vendors will ship products managed by snap-ins. Example of these tools include the Microsoft Active X, Real Audio controls, Wrag Image Edit controls and Microsoft Certificate mapper. Administrators can create or purchase additional tools to be used with specific snap-ins.

Microsoft Internet Information Server

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How to Install IIS

The custom installation option offers a choice of all components included with the Windows NT Option Pack. In addition to the previously listed components, the following options are available:

Certificate Server : Enables you to issue your own client and server certificates.

Internet Connection Services for RAS : Core Windows NT services that facilitate the creation of secure, seamless virtual private networks (VPN) and improved dial-up connections.

NNTP Service: Support Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) used for discussion groups.

Site Server Express: Makes it possible for you to analyze activity logs to determine site usage statistics and check links on your Web site to be sure they are functioning properly.

Visual InterDev RAD Remote Deployment Support: Enables the remote deployment of applications on your Web server.

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The Typical Installation

option includes all the components offered in the minimum installation option in addition to the following components:

Active Server Pages: Enables you to use server side scripting and components to create browser independent dynamic content.

Documentation : Provides you with online documentation covering server administration, content management, and content development, including indexing, scripting and programming.

Front Page Extensions: Makes it possible for you to use Microsoft FrontPage to manage your Web site and to create the web site content.

Index Server: Creates a site index and search for text in a variety of formats.

Microsoft Script Debugger: Provides you with a comprehensive debugging environment for testing and correcting errors in your Web document scripts. You can use Microsoft Script Debugger to debug both client scripts and server scripts.

Windows Scripting Host : Enables you to use Cscript or Wscript to administer servers from the command line.

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The minimum installation option conserves hard

disk space and offers the following limited components:

• Internet Information Server – A Web server that uses TCP/IP to host Web sites on the corporate Intranet or the Internet.
• File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Service – Installs the necessary components to operate an FTP server.
• SMTP Service – Supports Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).
• Microsoft Management Console (MMC) – Provides the ability to custom design administration tools taht “snap-in”. The MMC creates a uniform look and feel, regardless of the administration tool being used.
• Internet Service Manager snap-in – Offers complete control of your Web and FTP sites with a wizard driven graphical interface.
• Internet Service Manager (HTML) – Administers your Web and FTP sites from across the Intranet or Internet by using a Web browser.
• Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) – A transaction processing system for developing, deploying and managing distributed server applications. A transaction is a server operation that succeeds or fails as a whole, even if the operating system involves many steps. MTS also supports process isolation of applications.
• Microsoft Data Access Components – Eases use of databases with support for a variety of connections including Microsoft Active X Data Objects with Remote Data Service and OLEDB.
• Windows NT Option Pack Common Files – Core program files needed by all components.

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Windows NT Security

You may want to review and enable Windows NT Server security features to help secure your IIS installation. These Windows NT security features include:

• Using a complex password scheme.
• Maintaining strict account policies such as limiting the Guest account to specific directories on the server.
• Limiting the membership of the administrators group.
• Running only the service and protocols required by your system.
• Checking permission on network shares.
• Enabling auditing.
• Formatting drives as NTFS and applying appropriate permissions.

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IIS OS

Before installing IIS and associated components, make sure that your Windows operating system is setup with the following:

TCP/IP : IIS requires Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). TCP/IP provides the Internet connectivity necessary for retrieving data from the Internet and for hosting a site on the Internet.

NTFS : IIS require use of NTFS file system for SMTP service. NTFS allows users to limit access to files and directories on a Windows NT Server. The use of NTFS is key to maintaining a secure Internet server and is necessary component of SMTP service.

IP Address for Server : Simply installing components of the Windows NT Option Pack – including IIS does not require a static IP address. However, if you intend to use IIS to publish content to the Internet, you should have a static IP address or at least an address that very rarely changes.

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Microsoft Windows NT Server

Web Publishing Wizard

The Web Publishing Wizard (WPW) is a client side application that helps users post web pages to an IIS web site by automating the process of copying files from your computer to a web server. The WPW connects to the ISP, determine the protocol needed to copy the files, and uploads the files to the appropriate directory on the ISP computer.

Posting Acceptor
The Posting Acceptor is a component of Site Server Express. It enables IIS to accept Web content from the WPW, Netscape Navigator, Content Replication Server and other clients using HTTP.

Microsoft FrontPage 98 Server Extensions
IIS incorporates Microsoft FrontPage98 Server extensions, which allows users to take advantage of the administration features of FrontPage98 in managing their website.

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Certificate Authentication

With certificate authentication, clients can be mapped to a Windows NT Server user account using the industry standard client certificates such as X.509 digital certificates. Using this feature, administrators are able to provide users with single logon servers to network resources using client certificates.

Certificate wild-card mapping allows administrators to authenticate users without having access to the actual certificate. This provides administrators with the ability to map users to a Windows NT server user account using third party certificates such as those issued by VeriSign.

Internet Domain Blocking
Domain blocking allows administrators to grant or deny access to content on their server by domain. Report Writer provides a reliable way for administrators to control access to content by either granting or denying access to content on the server to all the users from a a specified Internet domain.

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Integration with Microsoft Transaction Server

Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) is a programming model that provides automatic support for transactions, thread management, database connection pooling, process isolation, and other mission critical programming functionality required for multiuser web server applications. MTS allows developers to capitalize on their existing knowledge of popular tools such as Microsoft Visual Basic, Microsoft Visual C++, Microsoft Visual J++ in creating desktop applications to create reliable and scalable data-driven web applications.

Process Isolation
Process isolation enables applications to run in a separate memory space from the Web and other applications. This provides a higher level of reliability for organizations running Web applications because Process isolation prevents an unstable application from crashing the server.

Active Server Pages
Active Server Pages is an open, compile free application environment in which developers can combine the ease of HTML with familiar tools like Visual Basic scripting and reusable Microsoft Active X server components to create dynamic and powerful websites. ASP enables server side scripting for IIS with native support for both VBScript and JScript.

The integration of IIS with Microsoft Transaction Server allows Report Writer to run as a component in the MTS environment and to take advantage of capabilities such as process isolation, transactions and scalability.

Server Side Java Virtual Machine
Server Side Java Virtual machine is a high performance and reliable Virtual Machine for creating and running Java components on the server. It provides developers with an industry standard, high performance platform for building and deploying Java based applications.

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